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it as nothing!"
Hulagur came up behind the shaman, a modern automatic in his hand. He tossed
the weapon into the air, caught it again, laughing--disclaiming something in
his own language.
"From the serpents we take two fangs," Menlik translated.
"These weapons may not be as dangerous as yours, but they can bite deeper,
quicker, and with more force than our arrows."
It did not take the Mongols long to strip the helicopter and the Reds of what
they could use, deliberately smashing all the other equipment which had
survived the wreck. They had accomplished one important move: The link between
the southbound exploring party and the Red headquarters--if that was the role
the helicopter had played--was now gone. And the "eyes" operating over the
open territory of the plains had ceased to exist. The attacking war party
could move against the ship near the
Red settlement, knowing they had only controlled Mongol scouts to watch for.
And to penetrate enemy territory under those conditions was an old, old game
the Apaches had played for centuries.
While they waited for the signals from the peaks, a camp was established and a
Mongol dispatched to bring up the rest of the outlaws and all extra mounts.
Menlik carried to the Apaches a portion of the dried meat which had been
transported Horde fashion--under the saddle to soften it for eating.
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"We do not skulk any longer like rats or city men in dark holes," he told
them. "This time we ride, and we shall take an accounting from those out
there--a fine accounting!"
"They still have other controllers," Travis pointed out.
"And you have that which is an answer to all their machines," blazed Menlik in
return.
"They will send against us your own people if they can,"
Buck warned.
Menlik pulled at his upper lip. "That is also truth. But now they have no eyes
in the sky, and with so many of their men away, they will not patrol too far
from camp. I tell you, andas
, with these weapons of yours a man could rule a world!"
Travis looked at him bleakly. "Which is why they are taboo!"
"Taboo?" Menlik repeated. "In what manner are these forbidden? Do you not
carry them openly, use them as you wish? Are they not weapons of your own
people?"
Travis shook his head. "These are the weapons of dead men--if we can name them
men at all. These we took from a tomb of the star race who held Topaz when our
world was only a hunting ground of wild men wearing the skins of beasts and
slaying mammoths with stone spears. They are from a tomb and are cursed, a
curse we took upon ourselves with their use."
There was a strange light deep in the shaman's eyes.
Travis did not know who or what Menlik had been before the Red conditioner had
returned him to the role of Horde shaman. He might have been a technician or
scientist--and deep within him some remnants of that training could now be
dismissing everything Travis said as fantastic superstition.
Yet in another way the Apache spoke the exact truth.
There was a curse on these weapons, on every bit of
knowledge gathered in that warehouse of the towers. As
Menlik had already noted, that curse was power, the power to control Topaz,
and then perhaps to reach back across the stars to Terra.
When the shaman spoke again his words were a half whisper. "It will take a
powerful curse to keep these out of the hands of men."
"With the Reds gone or powerless," Buck asked, "what need will anyone have for
them?"
"And if another ship comes from the skies--to begin all over again?"
"To that we shall have an answer, also, if and when we must find it," Travis
replied. That could well be true ...
other weapons in the warehouse powerful enough to pluck a spaceship out of the
sky, but they did not have to worry about that now.
"Arms from a tomb. Yes, this is truly dead men's magic. I
shall say so to my people. When do we move out?"
"When we know whether or not the trap to the south is sprung," Buck answered.
The report came an hour after sunrise the next morning when Tsoay, Nolan, and
Deklay padded into camp. The war chief made a slight gesture with one hand.
"It is done?" Travis wanted confirmation in words.
"It is done. The Pinda-lick-o-yi entered the ship eagerly.
Then they blew it and themselves up. Manulito did his work well."
"And Kaydessa?"
"The woman is safe. When the Reds saw the ship, they left their machine
outside to hold her captive. That mechanical caller was easily destroyed. She
is now free and with the mba'a she comes across the mountains, Manulito and
Eskelta with her also. Now--" he looked from his own people to the Mongols,
"why are you here with these?"
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"We wait, but the waiting is over," Jil-Lee said. "Now we go north!"
18
They lay along the rim of a vast basin, a scooping out of earth so wide they
could not sight its other side. The bed of an ancient lake, Travis speculated,
or perhaps even the arm of a long-dried sea. But now the hollow was filled
with rolling waves of golden grass, tossing heavy heads under the flowing
touch of a breeze with the exception of a space about a mile ahead where round
domes--black, gray, brown--broke the yellow in an irregular oval around the
globular silver bead of a spacer: a larger ship than that which had brought
the Apaches, but of the same shape.
"The horse herd ... to the west." Nolan evaluated the scene with the eyes of
an experienced raider. "Tsoay, Deklay, you take the horses!"
They nodded, and began the long crawl which would take them two miles or more
from the party to stampede the horses.
To the Mongols in those domelike yurts horses were
wealth, life itself. They would come running to investigate any disturbance
among the grazing ponies, thus clearing the path to the ship and the Reds
there. Travis, Jil-Lee, and Buck, armed with the star guns, would spearhead
that attack--cutting into the substance of the ship itself until it was a
sieve through which they could shake out the enemy. Only when the
installations it contained were destroyed, might the Apaches hope for any
assistance from the Mongols, either the outlaw pack waiting well back on the
prairie or the people in the yurts.
The grass rippled and Naginlta poked out a nose, parting stems before Travis.
The Apache beamed an order, sending the coyotes with the horse-raiding party.
He had seen how the animals could drive hunted split-horns; they would do as
well with the ponies.
Kaydessa was safe, the coyotes had made that clear by the fact that they had
joined the attacking party an hour earlier. With Eskelta and Manulito she was
on her way back to the north.
Travis supposed he should be well pleased that their reckless plan had
succeeded as well as it had. But when he thought of the Tatar girl, all he
could see was her convulsed face close to his in the ship corridor, her raking
nails raised to tear his cheek. She had an excellent reason to hate him, yet
he hoped....
They continued to watch both horse herd and domes.
There were people moving about the yurts, but no signs of life at the ship.
Had the Reds shut themselves in there, warned in some way of the two disasters
which had whittled down their forces?
"Ah--!" Nolan breathed.
One of the ponies had raised its head and was facing the direction of the
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